To celebrate the silver anniversary of the UConn men's 1989-90 Dream Season, The Courant will be looking at players and coaches who helped make that team special. Stories will appear periodically throughout the season.

To make a Dream Season, to turn a major college program around quickly, there has to be a confluence of the right people, the right places, the right time.

"We needed to get someone in this state who had visited N.C. State, visited Syracuse, who would say, 'I'm a Connecticut kid, I should stay in Connecticut,'" Jim Calhoun said.

For years, elite Connecticut players had been going elsewhere, schools considered better stepping stones to the NBA.

Then in 1988, Chris Smith decided to make his own path — from Bridgeport, through Storrs, to the NBA and back home again, where at 44, he coaches the kids at his alma mater, Kolbe-Cathedral.

"First was family," Smith recalled. "I wanted my family to be able to see me play. And Coach Calhoun was the only one that came to my house and said, 'This is going to be your team. Everybody is going to follow your lead.' As a young kid, that's what you want to hear."

So Chris Smith, a 6-foot-3 guard, came to UConn and helped make history. Twenty-five years ago, his sophomore year, the Huskies made their breakthrough, going 31-6, winning the Big East title and advancing to the NCAA's Elite Eight. Smith was the leading scorer, averaging 17.2 points during the Dream Season. He also had 132 assists and 63 steals as the Huskies played fast-paced offense and remarkable defense.

The Dream Season did not have a fairy tale ending. But it did have something...

"We had a real good team," Smith said. "We had Nadav Henefeld, who was a pro in Israel, and Scott Burrell, who had played pro baseball, and Tate George, a 6-5 guard, which was unheard of in those days. We started winning, and guys started to believe in themselves."

UConn got hot in the middle of the Big East season, rebounding from a blowout loss at St. John's with five wins in a row against conference heavyweights Pitt, Villanova, Seton Hall, Syracuse and Georgetown. Was it just a fluke?

Smith and the Huskies had the answer when they got to Madison Square Garden. The words, "Believe in US!' were scrawled on the blackboard before the Huskies beat Seton Hall in the first game. Then they played Georgetown, with Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo, and came from behind to win, 65-60.

Smith scored 18 points, making three three-pointers and leading a defense that stole the ball 10 times. The next day, Smith scored 20 as the Huskies beat Syracuse and Derrick Coleman, 78-75. The Huskies, for so long a Big East afterthought, took home the trophy – and Smith took home the MVP award.

"That's the game that sticks out for me," Smith said. "First of all, I went to the Garden to watch Knicks games, my uncles took me when I was young. That was big, like no other place. Back in those days, Georgetown, Syracuse, St. John's, they were considered the good teams and UConn was on the back-burner. To beat them like that, it was unheard of."

Everyone believed in UConn now; they returned to campus to learn they were the No.1 seed in the East. They went on to the regional finals, where they beat Clemson on Tate George's miraculous shot, and then lost to Duke on Christian Laettner's shot.

But for the moment, on March 12, 1990, UConn was Big East champ and, just as Calhoun and his lead recruiter, Howie Dickenman, had promised, it was a guy from Connecticut who had led them there.

"That's what Howie and I were preaching to him and preaching to him, how important he could become," Calhoun said. "Chris was so important to us in many, many ways. He just kind of came, didn't make a big deal out of coming, and was great for us."

And the impact of Smith's decision to stay home and make his mark reverberates to this day. Middletown's Andre Drummond, considered the top prospect in the country, chose UConn in 2011. As Norwalk's Steven Enoch became an elite recruit, he considered UConn his top choice and committed and signed last fall.

Smith went on to become UConn's leading scorer with 2,145 points, including 1,140 against the Big East by the time he graduated in 1992 with a degree in business administration. He went on to play three years with the Timberwolves and various pro teams overseas and in the U.S. before retiring in 2000. The friendships he made with that UConn team remain, so many teammates settling in Connecticut.

"Most guys go their own way after they leave college," Smith said. "We've got four or five guys from that team working here in the same place. They come from other places, and then when they come to Connecticut and the people embrace them so much, they end up staying."

Eventually, Smith made his way back to Bridgeport, where he works as a probation officer in the court support services division in the state judicial system. He is married (Zahraina) and has four children, Chris, Chyna, Chase and Christen.

"I'm a family man, first," Smith said. "I come to this job eight hours a day, dealing with kids, with youth, and after work, I go and coach more youth."

He became basketball coach at Kolbe-Cathedral in 2009 and the Cougars have been competitive year after year, practicing and playing in the Cardinal Shehan Center where, for Chris Smith, it all began.

"It's very important," Smith said. "Where I grew up, in Bridgeport, there were not a lot of opportunities. For kids to see how someone that grew up in that community came out, and see them doing well, I'm available for that. This is teaching first. The beauty of coaching, a lot of those kids do come back, and it seems I've taught them a lot of good things, to work hard, get an education, and a lot of them are doing well. That puts a smile on my face."